Ski champ Lindsey Vonn airlifted after crashing in race

(CNN) — Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn was airlifted to a hospital Tuesday after she crashed during the opening day super-G at the Alpine Ski World Championships in Austria, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association said.

The four-time Alpine World Cup champion suffered a “complex knee injury,” according to the hospital where she was taken. Her injuries are not life-threatening, a hospital spokesman said.

Vonn, 28, was immediately attended to by race medical officials in Schladming, Austria, before being transported to the hospital, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association said in a statement on its website.

She wrote in a special column published in The Denver Post that the women’s super-G runs might be postponed Tuesday because of weather.

“I’ve been trying to be patient and stay calm, but it’s pretty tough with the way the weather has been,” Vonn wrote. “It snowed a lot Sunday night, there was no training possible Monday on the race hill, then it rained most of Monday afternoon and evening.”

The heavy snow meant Monday’s free skiing session, in which she could learn about the race course’s terrain and conditions, was canceled, she wrote.

“None of our staff has been on the hill,” she wrote. “We don’t know what shape the hill is in. We don’t know anything about it.”

Vonn, who won the downhill gold in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, is just three wins behind Annemarie Moser-Proll’s record of 62 World Cup wins.